Visualizing Data With Sports

Contributor: Joanna D'Orazio Mignella. Lesson ID: 14189

Have you ever watched a big sporting event? Athletes are filled with talent! Have you ever wondered how much time they devote to their sport? Pie graphs can help you visualize their daily routine!

categories

Math, Middle School

subject
Math
learning style
Visual
personality style
Lion, Golden Retriever
Grade Level
Middle School (6-8)
Lesson Type
Quick Query

Lesson Plan - Get It!

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Picture the thrill of hitting a home run, making a three-point shot, or scoring the winning goal! Whether you love baseball, basketball, soccer, or any sport, there’s nothing quite like the rush of competition.

  • Do you have a favorite sport?

Think about all the energy and excitement it brings to your life.

Now, imagine capturing all those thrilling moments and stats in a cool way. With pie graphs, you can visually represent your favorite sports statistics, like the percentage of games won or the points scored by each player.

Check out the video below to see just how much action and excitement can happen in a sporting event!

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  • Incredible, right?

Dive into how you can create your own pie graphs to showcase your favorite sports data!

Every athlete knows that practice is key to success!

  • Have you ever thought about how much time athletes spend practicing compared to playing in a game?

That’s where pie graphs come in handy!

A pie graph is a circular chart that helps you visualize how a total amount is divided into parts. Each slice of the pie represents a fraction or percentage of the whole.

pie chart with percentages

To learn more about pie graphs, check out the video below!

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Pie graphs are awesome tools for exploring and interpreting sports data.

For example, look at a pie graph titled “A Basketball Star's Weekly Schedule.” This graph shows a hypothetical weekly schedule for a basketball player.

pie chart

In this pie graph, the entire circle represents 100% of the player’s time spent on basketball for the week. Each sector, or slice, displays a percentage that indicates how much time is spent on different activities.

The larger the sector, the more time it represents! The smaller sectors show less time spent.

Each sector is labeled with both the activity and the percentage of time allocated to it. This graph tells you what a basketball player does throughout the week and how much time they dedicate to each task.

basketball player

  • Which activity does this basketball star spend the most time doing each week?

That’s right—practicing! A basketball star spends 41.7% of their time practicing, making this the largest sector of the pie graph.

  • Which activity takes the least time?

It’s the "Other" category! This includes things like team meetings, hanging out with teammates, or attending team events. This slice is the smallest in the pie graph.

group of basketball players playing

Creating a pie graph starts with gathering data. Here’s the data that helped create this pie graph about the basketball star’s week.

  Activity Time Per Week Calculations Percentage
  Practicing 10 hours    
  Playing Games 5 hours    
  Resting & Recovery 4 hours    
  Strength Training 3 hours    
  Other 2 hours    
  Totals: 24 hours    

 

To turn this data into a pie graph, calculate the percentages following these steps.

  1. Calculate the total amount of data. In this case, the total is 24 hours spent on basketball-related activities.
  1. Find the percentage for each category. To do this, divide each category’s data by the total, then multiply by 100 to get the percentage. Round each percentage to the nearest tenth.
  Percentage = Total for Each Category x 100
  Total for All Categories

 

Here is the completed table of data.

  Activity Time Per Week Calculations Percentage
  Practicing 10 hours (10 ÷ 24) x 100 41.7%
  Playing Games 5 hours (5 ÷ 24) x 100 20.8%
  Resting & Recovery 4 hours (4 ÷ 24) x 100 16.7%
  Strength Training 3 hours (3 ÷ 24) x 100 12.5%
  Other 2 hours (2 ÷ 24) x 100 8.3%
  Totals: 24 hours   100%

 

  1. Draw your pie graph. Make sure each sector matches the percentage it represents. For example, you’ll notice that the “Practicing” sector is much larger than “Other,” because 41.7% is greater than 8.3%.

Now that you know how to find percentages, give it a shot!

A Soccer Player's Practice Schedule

This soccer player practices 175 minutes each day. The breakdown is listed below.

Drills: 60 minutes

Running: 30 minutes

Playing: 75 minutes

Find the percent of time spent doing each part of practice, and round each percent to the nearest tenth.

 

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Great work!

Next, head to the Got It? section to practice using pie graphs to visualize and interpret even more data!

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